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Most of the people world weigh themselves in kilograms.
by bryanl 9y ago
Most of the people world weigh themselves in kilograms.
- braythwayt 9y agoTrue, but WaxProlix is correct. Ten kilograms is 22 pounds on Earth, but 2.2 trillion pounds on the given Neutron Star.
- bloat 9y agoI was going to jump in and say that the pound is also a unit of mass. But it turns out its both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(force) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(force) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass)
- braythwayt 9y agoAnd then there's the foot-pound, a unit of torque much prized by the owners of muscle cars until eclectric vehicles went from obscure to early-adopter status.
- platz 9y agoAlso, assuming we're talking about rest mass, since without that distinction the word mass is ambiguous in accelerated contexts.
- uxp 9y agoOr just general torque in the United States. Electric vehicles still have tires that are joined to wheels which are fastened to an axle by the tightening of a nut on a threaded stud. For safety, we generally state that the nut should have X foot-pounds of torque applied to ensure it doesn't fall off. Unless Tesla et al. have suddenly decided to use a more universal standard in the states, I'd assume they still publish that value in ft/lbs, since 98% of tools designed to measure these things owned in the U.S.A. have this unit on them.
- glandium 9y agoWell, there's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram-force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram-force
- WaxProlix 9y agoThey roughly infer their mass (in kilograms) by assuming 9.8m/s/s gravitational acceleration and using a scale to judge how much mass the resulting 'push' would require given that pull. A scale would tell you that you weight slightly less at the top of a mountain than at sea level, though in reality you'd have the same mass. Same is true on a neutron star. It's an easy shorthand for the most part, since we're not 'weighing' ourselves in space, on the moon, etc, but in an article about space and physics and whatnot, it can come off as a bit sloppy.
- braythwayt 9y agoEvery single thing about life as we know it, humanity, and our brains is exceedingly sloppy. What makes it work? Error correction! So, thank you.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago> A scale would tell you that you weigh[] slightly less at the top of a mountain than at sea level, though in reality you'd have the same mass. For an illustration of a pedantic distinction, this seems awfully unlikely to be correct. You gain mass by eating and drinking and lose it by urinating, defecating, and breathing; odds are you're not going to have the same mass on the mountaintop.
- StavrosK 9y agoThis is physics, we're clearly assuming a perfectly spherical human with lossless and instantaneous modes of travel.
- WaxProlix 9y ago> pedantic Think you're maybe projecting? It was meant to be a silly example and taking a super uncharitable interpretation (object x at different times or states with different masses) of my statement just to be able to pick a nit strikes me as more pedantic than responding to a request for corrections with my high school level understanding of basic units.
- ricardobeat 9y ago
- TeMPOraL 9y agoBecause they're interested in knowing their mass, not their weight. Weighing is done using scales, which have a hardcoded division by gravitational acceleration of Earth on its... scales.